Aktuelles

Call for Papers

Burns and Byron in Scottish, British and European Romanticism
4-5 December 2010
University of Manchester

Keynote Speakers: Drummond Bone, Brean Hammond,
Nigel Leask, Murray Pittock and Martin Prochazka.

The Centre for Robert Burns Studies (University of Glasgow) and The Byron Centre (University of Manchester) are holding an international conference on 'Burns and Byron in Scottish, British and European Romanticism' at the University of Manchester, 4-5 December 2010.

Burns and Byron did much to shape first and second generation Romanticism. They are iconic points of reference from the early and late stages of Romanticism in the UK. Putting them together as a pair helps to focus attention particularly on the often-neglected Scottishness that runs through British Romanticism; indeed that often defined British Romanticism in the eyes of contemporary European readers. Their international
importance in fact invites questions about the ongoing Scottishness of European
Romanticism itself between Ossian and Scott. The two Centres invite proposals
for 20-minute papers on any aspect of the Scottishness, Britishness and, especially, the European-ness of these two Romantic celebrities, viewed from poetic, political, religious, cultural, historical or other perspectives. Topics might include:

  • Burns as a (proto) European Romantic;
  • Byron as European icon of Romantic Modernity;
  • Burns's / Byron's influence on European writers; 
  •  Burns's / Byron's own European influences;
  • Burns's / Byron's Scotland in European contexts; 
  • Burns's / Byron's  songs in European music;
  • Burns / Byron and the French Revolution;
  • European lines of continuity / association between Burns and Byron;
  • European perceptions of Romantic Scotland via Burns and Byron;
  • Influence of Burns / Byron on European perceptions of British Romanticism;
  • The Victorian celebration of Burns / Byron as Romantic icons;
  • Scottish diasporas / networks in Europe and the work of Burns and Byron;
  • Burns's (Scottish-ising) influence on Byron ;
  • Scott as inheritor / reader / promotor of both Burns and Byron; Burns /
  •  Byron and universal Freedom;
  • Burns / Byron and Tyranny;
  • The Reception of Burns / Byron in specific European countries / by individual authors;
  • Burns and Byron in nineteenth-century art / decoration.

The deadline for proposals is Friday 30 April 2010.
Please send 250-word abstracts to either Dr Gerard Carruthers ( gec@arts.gla.ac.uk) or Dr Alan Rawes (alan.rawes@manchester.ac.uk).

Romanticism and Responsibility: Concepts, Debates and Actions in Europe and its
Colonies 1770s-1830s

3-4 September 2010, University of Cyprus

Confirmed Speakers: Pamela Clemit, Paul Hamilton, Cora Kaplan, Laurence Lockridge, Nicholas Roe

Art exhibition and poetry reading by Marcia Scanlon

Call for Papers

This conference seeks to explore and interrogate the ways in which Romanticism was a universal call to responsibility, in itself revolutionary. The sense (and senses) of responsibility impelled one to action and gave value and significance to action. Action itself took many different forms and was expressed not only through the physical dynamics of movements and mobilisations but equally through writing, such as, but not limited to, poetry, fiction and journalism, and the arts (especially music and painting). Debates and actions posed the question of individual responsibility towards oneself, individual others, the community, but also the collective responsibility of a community,
nation, sex or race, and either individual or collective responsibility towards
more abstract notions, such as the nation and history, or non-human others,
such as animals, nature and the environment in general. Suggested list of
topics (not exhaustive):

  • ethics and responsibility; the individual as responsible agent;
  • education and judgment;
  • response-ability and the ethics of responsiveness;
  • the other, compassion and cosmopolitanism;
  • the transformation of self and world;
  • literature, the arts and civic responsibility;
  • politics of Romantic travel;
  • responsibility and freedom;
  • cosmopolitan idealism and responsibility;
  • theory and practice of responsibility in individual Romantics;
  • the responsibility of the community;
  • truth as responsibility;
  • the responsibility of taking sides in the debate: revolution versus social order;
  • vindications and indictments;
  • the responsibility to criticise;
  • the responsibility to and of women, children, the colonised, labourers and the enslaved;
  • who is responsible for violence / is violence responsible?;
  • responsibility and arbitrary power;
  • the power of responsibility and responsibility as empowerment;
  • the limits of responsibility.

Proposals for both individual papers and panels are welcome.

Please send an abstract of 200 words to evyvarsa@ucy.ac.cy by 31 May 2010.